Much inarticulate snarling and sputtering about. And yet more. And once again, still some more...
Pinch me lord, for I am surely dreaming....
from arse poetica:
University of California Sued Over Creationism.
LOS ANGELES -- A group representing California religious schools has filed a lawsuit accusing the University of California system of discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and other conservative Christian viewpoints.
The Association of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 800 schools, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming UC admissions officials have refused to certify high school science courses that use textbooks challenging Darwin's theory of evolution. Other rejected courses include "Christianity's Influence in American History."
According to the lawsuit, the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta was told its courses were rejected because they use textbooks printed by two Christian publishers, Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books.
Wendell E. Bird, a lawyer for the association, said the policy violates the rights of students and religious schools.
"A threat to one religion is a threat to all," he said.
UC spokeswoman Ravi Poorsina said she could not comment, because the university had not been served with the lawsuit. Still, she said the university has a right to set course requirements.
"These requirements were established after careful study by faculty and staff to ensure that students who come here are fully prepared with broad knowledge and the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed," Poorsina.
Chancel
Main Facade
Entrance
Interior
Entrance
Detail
Piano
Wall Hanging
Table
Oliver Wendell Holmes the elder (1809 – 1894) 
Preston Sturges (1898-1959)
Charlie Parker (1920-1955)
Richard Attenborough (1923-) FAFBLOG: So what's up, Democrats?
JOE BIDEN: What's up is the war in Iraq, which is terribly mismanaged, Fafnir.
FB: Oh wow! Are you guys against the war, too?
JOE LIEBERMAN: Oh no, we're not AGAINST the war!
HARRY REID: We're all FOR it!
BIDEN: It's the best worst idea in the world, and we're gonna run with it to victory!
HILLARY CLINTON: Watch me eat a bug!
FB: So we can actually win the war! That's great news!
LIEBERMAN: Yes!
REID: Sort of!
BIDEN: Maybe!
CLINTON: I can wrestle a buffalo!
FB: I'm confused.
REID: The problem is troop levels, Fafnir. The US invaded without enough boots on the ground!
LIEBERMAN: Just another couple hundred thousand soldiers on the ground and hey, we should have this thing wrapped up in no time!
BIDEN: Just like I told George Bush all along! I told him in the Oval Office, "You're gonna go in without enough troops and you're not gonna plan for the occupation and it's gonna be the biggest mistake of your presidency and I'm gonna vote for it!" (more)
How can we think it's anything but a macabre propaganda ploy when their defense for doing it is this:
The owner of the company that has been making gravestones for Arlington and other national cemeteries for nearly two decades is uncomfortable, too.
"It just seems a little brazen that that's put on stones," said Jeff Martell, owner of Granite Industries of Vermont. "It seems like it might be connected to politics."
What does this guy know? He's only been doing it for 20 years.
The Department of Veterans Affairs says it isn't. "The headstone is not a PR purpose. It is to let the country know and the people that visit the cemetery know who served this country and made the country free for us," VA official Steve Muro said.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) 
Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910)
Sheridan Le Fanu (1814 – 1873) 
Jack Kirby (1917 – 1994) 
Charles Boyer (1899 –1978) 
Robertson Davies (1913-1995) 
Donald O'Connor (1925 – 2003) 
The principal competion venue on Glasgow Green.
An impressivly chapeaued band enters the arena during a preliminary competition
This band woke me one morning by practicing in the part of Kelvingrove Park adjacent to my B+B. A great way to start the morning, watching them prepare for the competition. A most pleasant alarm clock, I must say.
The audience is often seemingly right amongst the pipers, at least we were at this venue for the Preliminaries held on the Glasgow Green.
Returning champions from a previous year (2003) take the field.
A band forms in a tuning circle during a practice session in Kelvingrove.
The Scottish Exhibition and Conference Center
Glasgow Central Station
Glasgow University
Glasgow Science Center
Glasgow Cathedral
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 - 1831) 
Man Ray (1890–1976) 
Paul Reubens (b, 1952- )
Edward Theodore Gein (1906 – 1984)They really don’t give a shit about assuring women the right to vote. Not here, not there. On the anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, the United States of America – where more than half the eligible voters are women – has decided that “democracy” means most people don’t get to cast a ballot:
MR. GERECHT**: Actually, I’m not terribly worried about this. I mean, one hopes that the Iraqis protect women’s social rights as much as possible. It certainly seems clear that in protecting the political rights, there’s no discussion of women not having the right to vote. I think it’s important to remember that in the year 1900, for example, in the United States, it was a democracy then. In 1900, women did not have the right to vote. If Iraqis could develop a democracy that resembled America in the 1900s, I think we’d all be thrilled.
from his bio at the Project for a New American Century:
Reuel Marc Gerecht is the Director of the Middle East Initiative at the Project for the New American Century and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
He is recently a contributor to Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign Policy (Editors Robert Kagan & William Kristol; Encounter Books, 2000) and is the author under the pseudonym of Edward Shirley of Know Thine Enemy: A Spy's Journey into Revolutionary Iran (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997).
A former Middle Eastern specialist in the CIA, Mr. Gerecht writes frequently on the Middle East, Central Asia, terrorism, and intelligence, in such publications as the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Middle East Quarterly, Playboy, and Talk.
By Tom Hamburger and Sonni Efron, Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — Toward the end of a steamy summer week in 2003, reporters were peppering the White House with phone calls and e-mails, looking for someone to defend the administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
About to emerge as a key critic was Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who asserted that the administration had manipulated intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion.
At the White House, there wasn't much interest in responding to critics like Wilson that Fourth of July weekend. The communications staff faced more pressing concerns — the president's imminent trip to Africa, growing questions about the war and declining ratings in public opinion polls.
Wilson's accusations were based on an investigation he undertook for the CIA. But he was seen inside the White House as a "showboater" whose stature didn't warrant a high-level administration response. "Let him spout off solo on a holiday weekend," one White House official recalled saying. "Few will listen." (more)
